Comments

So what makes a card a Potion card?The Gadgetzan potion spells all have "Potion" in their name and are in the Kabal Chemist's card pool.

What about Potion of Heroism? According to the only rule the keyword Potion has, it should be generated.It's NOT in the pool of cards Kabal Chemist can generate though. It's limited to Mean Streets of Gadgetzan - similar to how they originally limited Deathstalker Rexxar pool of beasts to previous expansions.It's nowhere written on the card that it adds a Mean Steets of Gadgetzan Potion to your hand though, like Elise the Trailblazer gives you a sealed Un'Goro Pack.

One of the most frustrating RNG cards yet imo. Of course, I only see it in arena. It's just random enough that you can't afford to play around certain effects if doing so loses you tempo, but it's not random enough that you don't get punished frustratingly often. When your opponent plays it, you don't know if you're playing around 5 damage AOE to all minions, some dinky freezing/demon potion, or blastcrystal huge removal. It either gives you complete garbage or it gives you good cards that may or may not be applicable (hellfire potion when your opponent is pressuring you with one big minion, or blastcrystal when your opponent has flooded the board). It's so inconsistent and yet once in a while it just causes such an undeserved loss or win.

I love minions that draw cards, but this is this weird mix of random and consistent that I feel is impossible to play around unless you have a really flexible hand. Really frustrating card.

I should've taken a screenshot but I remember playing into it yesterday and thinking that they still couldn't get it but when I got hit by it I actually laughed out loud at how bad of a misplay it was knowing they could get it

It definitely can in arena, I can't speak for ladder. I just won a game where the guy had no cards, got a chemist, and picked up dragonfire potion to wipe my board. I still won the game but the point is it can give you D-fire potion in arena.

Tempo this yada yada, tempo that yada yada, guys, you do realize that there is still control, like you can actually have cards which are for your early tempo and late cards for control, and the late don't actually have to be costly ones but could be ones like thought steal, burgle, this thing you're hating and so forth, something which simply has a lot of value due to the number of cards in it and even if not the most mana efficient excels when you get an opening to play it, we've seen plenty a times a control warrior to end his turn with leftover mana even against aggro decks, and that isn't too different with control casters either, maybe aside from handlocks since their leftover mana goes to tapping but ya, this card doesn't need to be tempo, just a solid control one.

This card would be amazing if it was a discover card but as a pure RNG car, it's unplayable. the chances of getting a card that works along with your deck are way too low to even being considered as a constructed card, while in arena the tempo loss are too significant as it is likely to happen when playing Kabal Chemist and again when playing half the options that the card spawns.

All 3 of these cards are great when coming off Kabal Chemist as it would be an anti-tempo play into board clear option (which is how board clears are meant to be played), but with a 3/7 chance it's too inconsistent to play in a refined Constructed deck.

playing Kabal Chemist is a tempo loss in itself as you're playing a glorified 2 drop with a chance to get a board clear, now imagine if that glorified 2 drop gave you a glorified 1 drop but for 3 mana. of course if you have Prince Malchezaar on your side of the field or you're playing warlock this card is a glorified 2 drop as well, but it's alot better than the other options available.

These 3 cards are solely the reason that this card will be dead as long as it isn't a Discover card. no matter how many board clears will be introduced. Potion of Madness is a great card for turn 1 or 2 against aggro decks but when played after turn 4 the chances of hitting something useful that'll kill more than 0 minions are low, the best bet is to Potion of Madness an enemy Armorsmith and Excavated Evil the board to gain a net 3 armor for 1 mana. Pint-Size Potion is the sole reason this card is unreliable to the point of unplayabililty the reliance of a board to gain value is the straight up opposite of the 3/7 board clears as the card works in completely different scenarios and it's up to luck to get the card that fits your board. Potion of Polymorph is the only secret you can get off this card and is completely dead against aggro decks while most mid-range shamans will sacrifice their Tunnel Trogg for the greater good which would lead to a net -3 mana ontop of the -1/-2 mana you got from playing Kabal Chemist.

Imo it might see some play in RenoLocks as a way of getting another board clear and they can make use of Bloodfury Potion. Putting it in any other class and not facing a control deck will result in an instant loss.

Wait wait, wait. You just said not only that this card is useless, but so are some of the most broken potions. To begin with not all cards need perfect tempo neither in constructed nor arena, one instance is tomb spider which works gloriously in either, second it doesn't matter if it's random, well yes it does in some other way but it doesn't change that the card is very good, even in the worst case you described with a 3 attack buff this would come in handy at often times, it also has a lot of other powerful cards it can give you, not to mention that back on the tempo part we don't always need a tempo play, in constructed in control decks we can see how sometimes over 5 mana isn't used in a post 9 turn, in arena as well post turn 9 it becomes more precise and you can just toss it in as a summon to give you something and decide what to do from there, this card is still a 2 in 1 with great possibilities, it being 4 cost or a 3/3 doesn't mean it needs to be a tempo minion that either wins you the early or gives you a card that does that early on, it can be far stronger by just letting your other cards handle the early game and just playing it later on as some board presence you may or may not augment (via argus or buffs or so forth) and more importantly giving you not a tempo but a control card for late, cause as you said it can give you 3 different board clears a variation of vaporize which could be good vs a control deck and meh vs an aggro one, a 3 damage costly buff which if you happen to have a demon would be a 3/3, either way it'll still be something on the side but in short, this is a later game control card when you have leftover mana and an opening to use it, and we've seen control priests and mages and handlocks don't fall too far back behind a control warrior so this is a very solid card; especially when we consider that with all the new cards control meta might get a lot more solid. Also you said something as powerful as pint-sized potion would be the thing making it unplayable, when it is a very solid card and even without any combos would be able to allow some great trades, also you're right about it being amazing if it was a discover, it would honestly be too op. That's pretty much it, i'd like to also note that RNG is what makes a card game a card game, every single card you draw is rng, you can have 3 cards at 5 cost and 27 and 1 and still draw those 3, so it's quite silly to complain about a 1/10 random potion rng when they're all quite decent to top it off.

Agree with you except on the most crucial part: note that RNG is what makes a card game

No sir, sorry but no, there is a big difference between card drawing (wich is heavily altered in most card games and in all physical card games is a must) and card like yogg-saron wich give 0 control over what you have just played. Randomness in spells and summons are BAD for a card game, it makes you feel horrible when they don't hit and happy when they do, when the card should be like the "if it did" option 100% of the times, you are suppose to be in control of your deck, if not, why did you built it? But heavy RNG is what team5 use to balance this game, so, it's common to asume heavy randomization is okey in card games if HS is the only or one of the few card games someone have played.